Of the 350,000 people who were born today around the world, less than 5% will be brought up in an English-speaking family; the rest will have to play catch-up, investing a phenomenal amount of time, effort, and in many cases money, if they hope to actively participate in this ever more globalized society.

Since English has become the lingua franca, the Anglosphere-- made up of UK, Ireland, Australia, USA, New Zealand and Canada-- has managed to turn the dissemination of English into a full-scale business operation.

Right now, these countries are grappling for market share. UK institutions are racking their brains in order to figure out how to hold onto to their pole position. Meanwhile, Australia and the US are ramping up efforts to tap into emerging markets through heavy advertising campaigns and public relations.

The sheer size of the industry cannot be overstated: there are upwards of 250,000 native ESL (English as a second language) teachers working abroad, and half as many again in their country of origin, whether that be in private classes, academies or schools. In South Korea alone, there are over 24,000 native English teachers sharing their blessed knowledge.

The market is mainly dominated by four big publishers, British in origin: Pearson, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Macmillan. Other companies are hot on their heels, though. So profitable is the business of teaching English, that Disney has been opening language schools in China since 2008 to get a slice of an Asian market worth over $6 billion a year.

In 2009, the English language crossed the million word threshold; new terms are being thought-up daily and technological vocabulary added to dictionaries regularly. To attempt to learn all this would be an undertaking of stratospheric proportions, not to mention insanity.

In order to reach native-like fluency and word range, one will need an active vocabulary of around 20,000 words and a further 20,000 words understood passively. Add to this about 30,000 idioms and phrasal verbs, and we get a rough idea of what learning English entails.

A lot of research has been carried out in this area, and official figures estimate that between 4000-6000 hours of study and ‘speaking time’ are needed to reach a native-like level.That equates to 2 hours per day for around 7 years. That’s right: it’s an extremely time-consuming activity, and to many it can seem like an insurmountable barrier.

This, though, is if you are aiming for mastery, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise: to reach mastery in almost any field requires around 10,000 hours of study. In his New York Times bestseller,Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell found a direct statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement, whether that be playing the piano, or being a first-class athlete.

The good news is that achieving mastery is not at all necessary for the vast majority of the population. If you can come to terms with that concept, you then need to define exactly what speaking English looks like for you. It’s a cliché, but what are your goals?.

Cambridge University Press suggests that it takes 600 guided learning hours to reach the Common European Framework B2 level from scratch. An intensive 20 hour a week course will get you there from a B1 level in 10 weeks.

Yet, most students feel frustrated and puzzled as to why they have a B2 certificate, but aren't able to string more than a couple of sentences together when asked for directions, or in any other real-life situation. The thing is, most learners’ goal, at the end of the day, is really to speak with a certain degree of fluency, and understand and make themselves understood in English.

That’s to say, with a fraction of the vocabulary and grammar you learn, you can communicate 95% of what you really want to say. Anything beyond that requires a massive effort with very little payoff. In economics, it’s known as the law of diminishing returns.

While the exam system, imposed upon English learners, focuses on confusing or misleading gap-filling and multiple choice exercises using an extensive word range, those who are actually learning to speak are experiencing marked improvements in fluency. They may not know a dozen ways to say ‘I like’, or whether it should be at, in or on the beach, yet they get by using a limited number of words, without spreading themselves too thin.

The Cambridge exams, for example, focus on a specific model with their own selection of vocabulary that must be practised and learned. This way, they can force students to follow their methodology and buy their material. It’s not uncommon for Spaniards who have lived in the UK for 5 or more years to fail the B2 exam, despite having excellent fluency.

The upshot is that you end up with a system full of students constantly working towards the next Common European Framework level, naively thinking that when they get the B2 or the C1 they will be able to finally speak fluently, when the real problem is that they already have too much information but don’t know how to use it.

While these certificates are extremely valuable for those aiming to attain a high level of English, and are demanded by employees and universities alike, spending too much time on them is counterproductive if you aren’t ever speaking the language: fluency can only come by practising what you already know.

In short, it’s easy to getbogged downdotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, and forget that a language is actually for communicating a message. The hurdles set by the English examination system mean that perfection is always round the next corner; but achieving fluency is up to you alone.

Of the 350,000 people who were born today around the world, less than 5% will be brought up in an English-speaking family; the rest will have to play catch-up, investing a phenomenal amount of time, effort, and in many cases money, if they hope to actively participate in this ever more globalized society.

Since English has become the lingua franca, the Anglosphere-- made up of UK, Ireland, Australia, USA, New Zealand and Canada-- has managed to turn the dissemination of English into a full-scale business operation.

Right now, these countries are grappling for market share. UK institutions are racking their brains in order to figure out how to hold onto to their pole position. Meanwhile, Australia and the US are ramping up efforts to tap into emerging markets through heavy advertising campaigns and public relations.

The sheer size of the industry cannot be overstated: there are upwards of 250,000 native ESL (English as a second language) teachers working abroad, and half as many again in their country of origin; whether that be in private classes, academies or schools. In South Korea alone, there are over 24,000 native English teachers sharing their blessed knowledge.

The market is mainly dominated by four big publishers, British in origin: Pearson, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Macmillan. Other companies are hot on their heels, though. So profitable is the business of teaching English, that Disney has been opening language schools in China since 2008 to get a slice of an Asian market worth over $6 billion a year.

In 2009, the English language crossed the million word threshold; new terms are being thought-up daily and technological vocabulary added to dictionaries regularly. To attempt to learn all this would be an undertaking of stratospheric proportions, not to mentioninsanity.

In order to reach native-like fluency and word range, one will need an active vocabulary of around 20,000 words and a further 20,000 words understood passively. Add to this about 30,000 idioms and phrasal verbs, and we get a rough idea of what learning English entails.

A lot of research has been carried out in this area, and official figures estimate that between 4000-6000 hours of study and ‘speaking time’ are needed to reach a native-like level.That equates to 2 hours per day for around 7 years. That’s right: it’s an extremely time-consuming activity, and to many it can seem like an insurmountable barrier.

This, though, is if you are aiming for mastery, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise: to reach mastery in almost any field requires around 10,000 hours of study. In his New York Times bestseller, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell found a direct statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement, whether that be playing the piano, or being a first-class athlete.

The good news is that achieving mastery is not at all necessary for the vast majority of the population. If you can come to terms with that concept, you then need to define exactly what speaking English looks like for you. It’s a cliché, but what are your goals?.

Cambridge University Press suggests that it takes 600 guided learning hours to reach the Common European Framework B2 level from scratch. An intensive 20 hour a week course will get you there from a B1 level in 10 weeks.

Yet, most students feel frustrated and puzzled as to why they have a B2 certificate, but aren't able to string more than a couple of sentences together when asked for directions, or in any other real-life situation. The thing is, most learners’ goal, at the end of the day, is really to speak with a certain degree of fluency, and understand and make themselves understood in English.

That’s to say, with a fraction of the vocabulary and grammar you learn, you can communicate 95% of what you really want to say. Anything beyond that requires a massive effort with very little payoff. In economics, it’s known as the law of diminishing returns.

While the exam system, imposed upon English learners, focuses on confusing or misleading gap-filling and multiple choice exercises using an extensive word range, those who are actually learning to speak are experiencing marked improvements in fluency. They may not know a dozen ways to say ‘I like’, or whether it should be at, in or on the beach, yet they get by using a limited number of words, without spreading themselves too thin.

The Cambridge exams, for example, focus on a specific model with their own selection of vocabulary that must be practised and learned. This way, they can force students to follow their methodology and buy their material. It’s not uncommon for Spaniards who have lived in the UK for 5 or more years to fail the B2 exam, despite having excellent fluency.

The upshot is that you end up with a system full of students constantly working towards the next Common European Framework level, naively thinking that when they get the B2 or the C1 they will be able to finally speak fluently, when the real problem is that they already have too much information but don’t know how to use it.

While these certificates are extremely valuable for those aiming to attain a high level of English, and are demanded by employees and universities alike, spending too much time on them is counterproductive if you aren’t ever speaking the language: fluency can only come by practising what you already know.

In short, it’s easy to getbogged downdotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, and forget that a language is actually for communicating a message. The hurdles set by the English examination system mean that perfection is always round the next corner; but achieving fluency is up to you alone.